The Case for Voluntourism: Some experiences in Tanzania, for better and for worse

Voluntourism: Does it Matter? To create power, the plug must match the outlet. An improper fit will at best do nothing and at worse cause unintended harm. The right fit; however, can create energy and light- yielding immeasurable results. The same is true for voluntourism. When a traveler visits a foreign country with the pure intention to be of humble service and is met by a community that has invited and anticipated his/her arrival, transformation can occur. Unite Tours, run under the umbrella of the social organization Unite The World With Africa, is a unique “service safari” outfit created in 2010 for just this purpose: to match talent to need, desire to opportunity, intention to outcome, thus creating power through fit. I fell in love with Tanzania after spending about a year there in the early 1990s as a student of wildlife and human cultural management and subsequent traveler. Like countless others, I came home deeply conflicted by supermarkets, SUVs, and long showers. I was filled with a burning desire to be of service, to do something that might help balance the scales. More than a decade later I met Father Dennis Mnyanyi from Morogoro, Tanzania, while he was in America studying theology. I asked him how I, now a working mother of three young children living in a Connecticut suburb, could be of REAL service to those living and suffering in some of the most remote and impoverished villages across East Africa. His response? “Come, see, learn, discover. Identify the local organizations who have the communities’ support and are creating real and lasting change, and then do your best to help them.” So I did ****** Unite The World With Africa has identified, vetted and partnered with a number of small grassroots organizations across Tanzania who are working in the fields of health, education and microfinance. Through Unite Tours we work with a number of exceptional local safari outfitters to empower travelers to combine traditional-style wildlife safaris with field visits to our partner NGOs. Travelers pay a pre-set donation and are welcomed in communities not highly frequented by Westerners, as friends of Unite- not tourists. This is a key point of differentiation. Each visit is carefully planned and “matched” by Unite and our partners. Visitors are often invited to tour facilities and private homes, play and read with children, sing and dance with adults, ask questions of local leaders, and when appropriate and pre-arranged, share their professional talents through workshops and/or lecture series. In return, upon their arrival back home Unite encourages them to pick up the torch and campaign for “the work.” However, as it is with all things that rely on human beings behaving a certain way, there are endless variables that can go right and also that can go wrong. Skeptics question: Does it matter? And my response is, “Who decides?” Here, some examples of voluntourism with Unite: AN executive and actress from New York City travel on safari with their two young children and make a quick stop at the Mswakini Primary School, which resembles countless other rural African schools: an inadequate facility with too many students and far too few teachers, desks, books and supplies. Moved to help, they ask the school principal, Naftali, what he needs most. His reply? Stoves. At the time, two local women were cooking one hot meal a day for more than 400 students and staff using clay pots supported by a triangle of rocks over an open fire, all of which require a steady stream of wood/timber and stoking. Subsequently, producing a steady stream of thick black harmful smoke. The couple went home and sent money via Unite to Naftali. Today, these women cook in two large aluminum stoves, whose foundations and chimneys mean no open fires (no accidents), no smoke (no respiratory distress) and much less time and energy. AN American couple in their 70s fulfill their “bucket list” dream of going on a luxury safari in East Africa. On the way, they stop for quick visits at a few of Unite partner NGOs to see what hands-on fieldwork looks like. They were also moved to make a difference. The couple decided to sponsor a child’s education for her lifetime and donate towards the completion of a water well. They went for safari but discovered much more. “While safari was originally the focus of our trip, our time with Unite’s partners was so enriching. It led us to understand how we too could be ‘part of it.’” - Deirdre Marsters, RI. FOUR children from one Boston family spent months raising money through roadside lemonade stands, letter campaigns to friends, and selling Unite bracelets at their Dad’s workplace to purchase bed nets to help prevent the spread of malaria. When they arrived in rural Mvuleni Village in the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro to distribute their 700 nets, 3,000 villagers of all ages had gathered from vast distances to meet them. AN obstetrics and gynaecology OB/GYN left her private practice in St. Louis, Missouri to travel to Tanzania. Unite’s Tanzanian in-country partners spent months traveling hundreds of kilometers around Maasailand seeking out midwives and traditional healers to meet us that day in June. We spent the first half-day of the 2-day workshop explaining to the women sitting under an Acacia tree with their legs straight out and bodies and heads covered in colorful kangas that it was ok for them to talk to this white doctor from America. They didn’t want to, as they didn’t believe that the insides of our bodies – ours white, theirs black – were the same. So what could she possibly know? It wasn’t until we pulled out our gifts of sterile scissors and key chain solar lights that the atmosphere changed and we became “most welcome.” When the workshop ended, we watched the women walk off into the bush. With the sun setting they were enjoying clicking their new lights on and off and chattering amongst themselves in their local Maa language.. We hoped that they would indeed use their new scissors to perform circumcisions and deliveries instead of their commonly used rusty old knives and shards of broken glass. They promised us they would. SIX American women in their 40s (and a bit older) visit the Matonyok orphanage outside of Arusha, Tanzania. Matonyok’s founders are an older Tanzanian couple named Emmy and Ndemno who are raising nearly 80 orphans aged newborn to 15. The kids sleep 4 to 6 in a bed (a ratty old soiled mattress on a wooded board), shovel their own pit latrines for biofuel, and receive one pack of famine relief protein powder in their food once a week. Here love is plentiful, but food and supplies scarce. The women decide to help. Emmy asks for a chicken project — 200 chickens and a well-built coup to produce nutritious eggs to eat and to sell. The money has been raised and construction is underway. “IT’S not the right stamp,” the customs official barked at me. “Pay $15,000.” After three hours holed up in that dark windowless customs office, I emerged at 1:00 am to meet my travel team who were outside waiting on still-hot tarmac. To get the $60,000 worth of medicines and medical supplies that had been donated to us by Americares and packed in our 18 second suitcases through customs, I ended up giving $500 in cash and almost all of the 100 headlamps we had brought over for students whose families could not afford kerosene as “gifties.” Night after night on that tour we moved those suitcases to new and different secure locations – always one step ahead of the tipped-off thieves who were clearly in hot pursuit. Months later, we learned that nearly half of those medicine were eventually discarded after being held up in a fight over who were the intended recipients and thus exceeding expiration dates. The other half was finally distributed at rural village clinics and used to treat – and cure – children and adults suffering from diarrheal disease. The examples go on and on. While there are often unforeseen bumps in the road and visitors don’t always end up serving ways anticipated or imagined, voluntourism is powerful and – I argue – necessary in today’s world. We invite and encourage Americans to walk, bake, write, sell, give and/or ask for donations; to reach out to their communities’ and gather school supplies, soccer balls, books, clothing, electronics, medical supplies, computers and more. When they do, which often involved stepping out of their comfort zones, something important is happening. “And when those who are blessed with the opportunity and means to travel arrive in villages a world away and are met by smiling faces, dancing bodies, voices in song… something important is happening.” The transfer of funds, supplies and especially knowledge across vast oceans and cultures is difficult, awkward and inefficient at best; however, the raw human energy that be generated through the “right” connection may be enough – I believe – to change the world.